Study title

United Kingdom

Individual

(1) Evaluating the Effectiveness of the Self‐Administered Interview for Witnesses with Autism Spectrum Disorder: Participants with ASD (N=33; 27 males) were recruited predominantly in London and the South East of the UK from autism support groups and societies, and by word of mouth. All ASD participants had received formal diagnosis by qualified clinicians with local health authorities according to DSM-IV (American Psychiatric Association, 2000) criteria for Autistic Disorder or Asperger’s syndrome, and diagnoses were confirmed for all participants by assessment with the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS; Lord, Rutter, DiLavore & Risi, 1999). Comparison participants (N=35; 26 males) were recruited through local newspaper advertisements and were pairwise matched within 7 points of verbal IQ as measured by the WAIS-R or WAIS-III UK (Wechsler, 1997) to the ASD participants. None of them had known psychiatric, developmental or neurological disorders. Groups did not significantly differ on age, VIQ, PIQ or FIQ and participants were randomly assigned to interview conditions with the constraint that all subgroups were matched in terms of chronological age and VIQ. Participants also completed the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ, Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright, Skinner, Martin & Clubley, 2001). Participants provided their informed consent and were warned before watching the video that some people may find the events in the video disturbing. Ethical approval for the study was obtained from the Research Ethics Committees at City University London and Royal Holloway, University of London. Video: The video lasted 105 seconds and depicted an attack on a woman in a taxi cab. The video was presented on a 17” monitor in a different room from that in which participants completed their interview booklets.Interview booklets: The Self-Administered Interview© (SAI, Gabbert et al., 2009; Hope et al., 2011) was presented in a slightly modified version of its usual booklet form and comprised five main recall sections. Prior to the first section instructions emphasised the importance of completing the booklet in sequential order and completing all sections. The first section began with context reinstatement instructions in both sentence and bullet point form. Before starting to record their memories, participants were asked to picture in their mind where they were, what they saw, what they were thinking and how they were feeling at the time. They were then instructed to write down everything that they could remember (the “report all” instruction). In the second section participants were asked to recall detailed information about the perpetrator’s appearance with the option of using a body diagram for participants to add further information. The third ‘sketch plan’ section asked participants to generate a graphical representation of the general layout of the scene, and the fourth section asked for descriptions of any other persons who were present. Information about any vehicles that may have been present or involved in the incident was asked for in the fifth section. The SAI also contained a sixth section, asking a series of questions about the witnessing conditions, and a seventh section providing an opportunity for participants to report any additional information about the event that they had not mentioned or been asked about previously. The rate of additional relevant information provided by participants was at floor in these final two sections, and following Gabbert et al. (2009) we focused analysis on the first five sections of the booklet only. The SAI booklet was modified slightly for ease of interpretation in the context of the present experiment. For example, the term ‘video clip’ was used and points that were irrelevant and, therefore, had the potential for confusion in the experimental situation (e.g., when sketching the scene to “include details of where you were” and “was anyone involved that you know, or who you have seen before?”) were omitted. The structured recall (SR) booklet was designed to match the number of recall attempts of the SAI (i.e., five), but without the cognitive and memory-enhancing techniques of the SAI. As with the SAI, in the first section of the SR booklet participants were asked to write down what they could remember from the video clip, but they were not given the context reinstatement instructions, nor were they explicitly instructed to report everything. In the second section, participants were asked to provide detail about the perpetrator, but were not provided with a body diagram to facilitate their recall, nor were they prompted to provide specific details such as age, gender and ethnicity. The third section of the SR asked participants to provide details of the scene of the crime, but they were not given an opportunity to produce a sketch. Participants were asked to provide details of other people in the fourth section and vehicles in the fifth section, but as with the second section they were not prompted to recall specific details. SAI evaluation questionnaires: Participants were additionally provided with SAI evaluation questionnaires, adapted from Gawrylowicz, Memon, Scoboria, Hope and Gabbert (under review), to be completed after the SR booklet at Time 2. The questionnaires asked participants about which parts of the recall booklets were particularly easy or difficult to complete, and which (if any) parts were useful in helping them to concentrate and remember more. There were also specific questions pertaining to the effectiveness and usability of the cognitive SAI components, including the context reinstatement instructions and sketch plan. Design: The present study employed a 2 (Group: ASD vs. comparison) x 2 (Interview Condition: SAI vs. control SR) between-participants design, with two times of recall. At Time 1 participants completed either an SAI or an SR, and at Time 2 (one week later) all participants completed an SR (regardless of their interview condition at Time 1).Procedure: After watching the video participants completed unrelated tasks in a different room for around 30 minutes, following which they were given either the SAI or SR interview booklet to complete. Participants were given as much time as they needed to complete the booklet. Before leaving, all participants were provided with a sealed envelope containing an SR booklet, evaluation questionnaire and debrief sheet (in separate envelopes within). They were instructed to open the envelope one week later (Time 2) and to follow the instructions enclosed and return the completed forms using the SAE provided. Coding and preliminary analyses: Each detail that participants mentioned in their recall booklet was coded as either correct or incorrect against a coding template of the video, which contained 280 pieces of information: 77 person details; 69 action details; 53 object details, and 81 surrounding details. Recall was coded using Stein and Memon’s (2006) scoring template, where each piece of information was classified as a Person (P), Action (A), Surrounding (S) or Object (O) detail. For example, the sentence “the middle-aged woman was talking to a younger woman by a ‘no-smoking’ sign” would be coded in the following way: middle-aged (P), woman (P), was talking (A), to a younger (P), woman (P), by a ‘no-smoking’ sign (S). Subjective responses, such as “the cab driver was aggressive”, were not coded. Each item was only coded the first time it was mentioned (e.g., a detail mentioned in Section 1 and again in Section 2 would be coded only in Section 1). In order to examine the information gained from the SAI Sketch, the third section was additionally coded for all details reported regardless of whether participants had reported them in a previous section. This allowed a direct comparison of the effectiveness of the SAI sketch plan compared to a written recall attempt. Details provided in the sketches of the SAI were coded in the same way as the other sections, meaning that any labels and clear drawings representing video details were coded as correct or errors and attributed to the appropriate detail type. A second independent rater, blind to the hypothesis of the study, scored 12 interview transcripts (3 in each Group x Interview Condition cell). Inter-rater reliability was satisfactory; the resulting Pearson’s correlations of the two raters’ scores were: rcorrect = .99, p < .0001, and rerrors .72, p < .01.(2) Recall of a live and personally experienced eyewitness event by adults with autism spectrum disorder: Eighteen participants with ASD (16 males and 2 females) who were formally diagnosed by qualified clinicians were recruited predominantly in London and the South East of the UK from autism support groups and societies, and from word of mouth. All ASD participants were diagnosed by experienced clinicians with local health authorities according to DSM-IV (American Psychiatric Association, 2000) criteria for Autistic Disorder or Asperger Disorder and diagnoses were confirmed for all participants by assessment with the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS; Lord, Rutter, DiLavore & Risi, 1999). Eighteen comparison participants were recruited through local newspaper advertisements and comprised 15 males and 3 females who were pairwise matched within 7 points of verbal IQ as measured by the WAIS-R or WAIS-III UK (Wechsler, 1997) to the ASD participants. They had no known psychiatric, developmental or neurological disorders. Groups did not significantly differ on age, VIQ, PIQ or FIQ. Participants also completed the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ, Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright, Skinner, Martin & Clubley, 2001). Participants provided their informed consent and were warned before taking part in the first aid scenario that they were about to see a manikin posing as an accident victim so that they were not alarmed. Ethical approval for the study was obtained from the Research Ethics Committees at City University London and Royal Holloway, University of London. NOTE: Consent forms at the time of testing did not include a sentence informing participants that their anonymised data may be made available for re-use or shared according to ESRC policy on data sharing. Participants have been retrospectively contacted with an addendum to the original consent form and most have provided written notification that they are happy for their data to be made available. However, this was done approx. 2 years after testing, and it has not been possible to obtain explicit consent from every participant. Therefore a partial data set is uploaded, containing data only from participants whom have given their revised consent for data sharing. Please contact the lead researcher, Dr Katie Maras (k.l.maras@bath.ac.uk) for further details. The first aid scenario was centred around a manikin, who was a purported car crash victim. The manikin was approximately 180cm in height and made of flexible grey foam, with facial features but no hair or make-up. The manikin was dressed as a professional male in smart trousers, a shirt (with a red biro in the shirt pocket) and tie, and was also wearing a brown belt, wrist watch and socks. In his left trouser pocket were a set of keys, and in the right trouser pocket was a wallet with an ID membership card inside. The manikin-victim had five notable injuries: 1) wounded right hand, which was represented with fake blood on the top of the hand; 2) burn on the left forearm, again denoted using fake blood; 3) broken right arm, which was twisted up into an unusual position; 4) broken left leg, which was crooked at an odd angle; 5) a wound to the right foot, which was visible through a hole in the sock and fake blood on both the sock and the foot. A number of first aid items were present in the same far right-hand corner of the room. A hazard triangle, foil blanket, red cotton blanket and green first aid box were all on the floor next to a table. The first aid kit contained a number of items including some bandages, band aids, a pad, scissors, tweezers, gloves and sterile swabs. On the table was a tea towel, some cling film and a fluorescent high visibility vest. The experimenter always wore the same clothes and jewellery, including a scarf which she subsequently removed during the scenario to use as a sling. An A2-size photograph print was hung on the far wall opposite the door depicting a car crash, in which two cars were severely damaged following an obvious collision. DESIGN AND PROCEDURE:Participants were tested individually, and to avoid spontaneous context reinstatement at interview the first aid scenario was carried out in a different building from the subsequent memory interview. Participants were informed that their task was to help the experimenter carry out some first aid on a manikin-victim, and that the experimenter would instruct them on what they needed to do. On entering the room the experimenter pointed out the picture on the wall and explained that the manikin-victim had been in a car crash and had sustained a number of injuries. The first aid scenario then followed which comprised a series of actions performed by both the experimenter and participant, which were balanced to ensure that the experimenter and participant each carried out both salient and trivial actions (see Appendix 1). In order to control for any potential effects of verbal scaffolding from participants receiving instructions for their own actions, the experimenter provided the same level of verbal description of her own actions as that of the participant’s (e.g., participant-performed task: “can you check his pockets”; e.g., experimenter-performed task: “I am just going to check if he is breathing”). During the scenario there were 19 scripted actions performed by the experimenter, and 19 that were performed by the participant (e.g., Other-performed action: the experimenter gets a bandage from the first aid kit; e.g., Self-performed action: the participant rolls the bandage up). The scenario began with an initial assessment and precautionary measures (e.g., putting a hazard triangle out and checking breathing), before each of the injuries were dealt with in turn. Event scenarios were videoed through a two-way mirror for quality control purposes to ensure that they all followed the script accurately, and to double-check for any inconsistencies from participants’ reports of what happened during their interview. Following the first aid scenario participants were engaged in similar unrelated tasks for around one hour, before being interviewed for their memory of the first aid event by a different experimenter from the one who carried out the first aid event with them. Interviews followed the same standard structure recommended by government to professionals who interview witnesses, as outlined by the Home Office (2011) Achieving Best Evidence guidance. Interviews began with rapport building, and then the aims and structure of the interview was explained to the participant, where they were given the opportunity to ask questions. The interviewer explained that they should try to recall everything in as much detail as they could about what happened and what they could see during the first aid scenario, and that they should particularly try to recall the finer details of exactly who did what during the scenario. Participants were reminded that the interviewer did not know what happened and that their task was to describe the event as accurately as they could. The free recall (FR) phase then followed, whereby the participant was instructed to take their time and to recall as much as they could from the scenario. Once the participant had finished speaking and was waiting for the next instruction, they were asked “can you remember anything else?” When they had responded to this and/or indicated that was all they could recall, the questioning phase began. The participant was once again instructed not to guess and that it was ok to say if they did not know the answer to any questions. Questions followed a structured sequence to probe for information pertaining to each of the actions and who performed them, and for descriptions of what things looked like. All participants were asked the same questions, but only if they had already mentioned that topic in their FR or previously in the questioning. For example, where a participant mentioned that they had put a bandage on the manikin, they were asked who had fetched the bandage. However, if no mention was made of using the bandage this question was not asked. Similarly, if a participant had mentioned that the manikin was wearing a tie they would be asked for more information about what the tie looked like. Questions were witness-compatible (i.e. using the witness’s own terminology) and were predominantly open-ended. Closed questions were kept to a minimum and leading and misleading questions were avoided. All interviews were video and audio-recorded for subsequent transcription and coding.Interviews were transcribed and each detail that the participant mentioned was coded against a coding template of actions and descriptions of items and people that were present in the scenario. The script contained a total of 19 Self-performed and 19 Other-performed actions (Appendix 1). Details were only coded the first time they were mentioned. However, where a participant mentioned an action in free recall but failed to specify at the time who had carried out the action (e.g., “we put a bandage on”), this was followed up in the questioning phase, and their answer to this prompting (e.g., “I put the bandage on”) was coded as having been mentioned in the free recall phase. Each detail reported was coded as “correct” (e.g., “the victim’s shirt was blue”), incorrect (e.g., “his shirt was red”), or confabulated (e.g., “the victim was wearing a hoody”), with the exception of the 19 Self- and 19 Other-performed actions, which were coded as correct or incorrect only (confabulations were scored separately from self and other details). Self errors were coded where a self-performed action was misattributed to having been performed by the experimenter, and Other errors were coded where the participant incorrectly attributed that they performed an action that was actually performed by the experimenter. In addition to the main scripted items, there were also a number of actions that inevitably always occurred (e.g., removing the band aid from its packaging, the participant and experimenter kneeling down etc.) Actions such as these that always occurred in all participants’ scenarios were scored if they were reported correctly, but were not tagged specifically as Self or Other. Actions that occurred only in an individual participant’s scenario (i.e., those that went off-script) were not scored, in order to ensure that all participants had an equal number of potential details to score on. In addition to these action details, recall was also scored for details pertaining to people (i.e., what the manikin and the experimenter were wearing and descriptions of the people present in the photograph of the car crash), objects (e.g., the first aid items) and surroundings (e.g., what the room looked like and the location of items). For example, the statement “Anna got the red blanket from the corner and I lifted his leg and put the blanket underneath it” would be coded as 1 Other-performed action correct (got the blanket), 1 Self-performed action correct (lifted his leg), 1 Other-performed action incorrect (saying that the participant had put the blanket under the leg, when in fact it was the experimenter who had done this) and 3 correct details about the item and its location (it was red, it was a blanket and it was in the corner).A second independent rater blindly scored eight randomly selected interview transcripts (four in each group) against the event script and the resulting Pearson’s correlations between the two raters were good for each type of detail, and importantly also for those specifically pertaining to self and other details: rcorrect = .97, p < .0001, rincorrect = .81, p < .05, rconfabulations = .92, p < .001, rselfcorrect = .95, p < .001, rself incorrect = .90, p < .005, rother correct = .99, p < .001, rother incorrect = .92, p < .001.